My Sewing Room

Now that I've finally decided that I need to move out of this house and find a new place to work, here's a tour of my sewing room! I hope that in another year's time I will have a new, roomier space that's not part of my house.

I've lived and worked here for over 4 years now. Since moving in I have accumulated four industrial sewing machines, lots of new sewing tools, and a thrift store worth of used furniture.


Here I am pretending to sew. Thanks to Whitney from Bows and Arrows/Maker's Mart for taking some of these pictures!


This is my cutting table, plus a better view of my straight-stitch industrial machine. More info on that machine can be found here.

I have two walls full of windows in a room on the second story of a 100+ year old Victorian house. The house was built at the top of a hill and the ground is eroding on one side, so the entire back of the house (including my sewing room) is sloping downwards and slowly sinking down the hill. I love the view I have (mostly just trees in the summertime) and I love how I feel on top of the world in this room, but it would be nice to work out of a more stable place. All my furniture and machines have to be propped up on one end so that they are level.


Here is the opposite corner of the room. My computer desk, another industrial sewing machine, and lots of storage is in this corner. This room used to be a kitchen so I have built in cabinets and a little mirror. I also have a linoleum floor, which is awesome because it's difficult to clean thread scraps and faux fur fabric dust off of carpet. The wall behind my desk looks like shit because there used to be a big metal sink there. I had to tear it out of the wall when I moved in, and now I can't push my desk all the way back because there are pipes sticking out of the wall.


This is the third corner of my sewing room with my third industrial machine. (My fourth machine is over at my parents house because I don't really need it at this time.) I still have more small shelves to put on the wall above the machine. I'm pretty good at using every amount of space available in my room. When you have limited space, you can either stack shelves up to the ceiling or hang tons of things from the walls.


Fourth wall: my shipping supplies are stored above and below my air conditioner. My air conditioner can only keep the room to about 10 degrees cooler than outside, so on 105 degree summer days this place turns into a literal sweatshop. This room was added on after the house was originally built (you can see the original outside wall in this picture) and the bastards who built it didn't think insulation was necessary!


I use my bedroom to store clothing samples, fabric, and other stuff that doesn't fit in my sewing room. This clothing rod holds samples and patterns, and I have three rows of shelves above it that hold even more stuff.


I keep fabric rolls and faux fur fabric in a big metal shelf. The box on the bottom holds my roll of thick manila pattern paper.


You didn't think you'd get through this post without a cat picture, did you? This is Paco. She sleeps all day while I work. It's cute and annoying, because she makes that bed look so damn comfortable.

That's all for now! Here are more pictures from the Maker's Mart interview:






And what the hell, might as well post a picture of my house: